JoAnn

I am a homeschooling mom of four wonderful blessings and Master Playologist with SimplyFun. I'm known for my distractedness, thus the title of my blog. It's about all of the distractions in life: those that are part of homeschooling, those that distract from our homeschooling day, and everything in between. I love everything that comes with staying at home and homeschooling the kids and wouldn't trade it for anything. I love helping others and hope to encourage parents to spend time connecting with and getting to know their kids better. You can find me on Facebook (HomeschoolDistractions or JoAnnsGames), Twitter (JoAnnsGames), and Perioscope (JoAnnsGames). You can also email me at fortheloveofshiny at gmail dot com.

Scott

Scott is my husband of 16 years. He is a wonderful father and avid supporter of homeschooling. He is the sole proprietor of IT Service Works, which he established to serve the IT needs of small businesses in the Tacoma area and beyond. If you need excellent and reliable IT support, contact him.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Scott and I decided it is time to get Sam allergy tested. I'll be taking him back to the doctor soon for a follow up to his latest round of antibiotics. (We've been fighting sinus congestion, cough, and ear infections for two months now...and he's still having symptoms.)

Anyway, Sam's always had red-rimmed eyes. Always. We were hoping to see them go away now that I've eliminated nearly all of the dairy in our diet. I'm completely dairy free all the time. Scott and the kids are dairy free at home, but I allow them to order whatever they wish away from home. If the allergic shiners were caused by dairy, I'm confident we would have seen the correlation.

A couple times in the last week or so, I've noticed the redness around his eyes being more pronounced than usual. One of those times, the redness was the most noticeable ever; the day after the entire area was peeling. We haven't been eating out, and I can't pinpoint anything obvious in our diet. It's time to do allergy testing and try to determine the cause. We're hoping that if we can find the cause, we can do something about it, and in doing so, help him with some other areas he struggles with.

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Comments:

Have you considered wheat? Sometimes an intolerance rather than an allergy (different type of reaction) can cause the shiners as well. We're wheat and dairy free here and all of our constant colds disappeared with the switch.

Hi there. I actually found your blog on a search for "allergic shiners". Did you ever determine what was causing this for your son? My son's eyes look very similar at times! The red rings around his eyes were very pronounced at Christmas time (more sweets to eat, less sleep, etc.) I believe these are allergic shiners for him, and cannot figure out what has changed, to be causing this. He's allergic to peanuts and lactose intolerant...but yet I'm wondering what's gone wrong for him...Love your blog! I'm homeschooling too--it's great!